PM (newspaper)

PM was a liberal leaning daily newspaper published in New York City by Ralph Ingersoll from June 1940 to June 1948 and financed by Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III.

The origin of the name is unknown, although Ingersoll recalled that it probably referred to the fact that the paper appeared in the afternoon;The New Yorker reported that the name had been suggested by Lillian Hellman. (There is no historical evidence for the suggestion that the name was an abbreviation of Picture Magazine.) The paper borrowed many elements from weekly news magazines, such as many large photos and at first was bound with staples. In an attempt to be free of pressure from business interests, it did not accept advertising. These departures from the norms of newspaper publishing created excitement in the industry. Some 11,000 people applied for the 150 jobs available when the publication first hired staff.

There were accusations that the paper was Communist-dominated, but a thesis by Anya Schiffrin concluded that the paper frequently opposed the policies of the Communist Party and got into editorial fights with the CP's paper, the Daily Worker.

Circulation averaged 165,000, but the paper never managed to sell the 225,000 copies a day it needed to break even. According to a June 21, 1966 memo from Ingersoll:

Before the end of the War it was actually operating in the black... In my opinion at the time and these 20 years later−PM's death is most soundly attributable to a sustained and well-organized plot originating amongst Field's friends and associates in the business world who were alienated by Field's loyalty to PM and to me. The hostility was there from the beginning; the plot came together under the auspices of a man named Harry Cushing who was a retainer of Field's. The principal and successful offensive of this group was that it had as its objective Field's distraction from PM by persuading him to start the Sun in Chicago. Once they committed Field to the Sun venture, the end was inevitable. I can diagram it for you but merely put it on record here.

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